Ga. ‘Boss of Schools’ Weathers Setbacks

Kathy B. Cox leans over the cluster of desks and watches while the
4th graders use eyedroppers to mix colored water into light and dark
shades of green.

Kathy B. Cox

Position: Georgia state schools
superintendent

Age: 39

Education: Emory University;
bachelor’s degree in political science, 1986; and
master’s in political science, 1990

Career: Taught high school social studies
for 15 years in the Fayette County school system, south of Atlanta.
First taught at Fayette County High School, and then at Sandy Creek
High School, where she also served as the chairwoman of the social
studies department

Other
service: Member, state House of Representatives,
1998-2002

Personal: Married to John H. Cox for 16
years; two sons, ages 13 and 10

Coker Elementary School science teacher Pam Bishop then lets the
class chat so she can take advantage of her one and only chance to talk
in person to Georgia’s schools superintendent.

But the ticklish question of how evolution will be treated in the
new state curriculum—an issue that drew national attention just a
couple of months ago—never comes up. Instead, Ms. Bishop tells
Ms. Cox how pleased she is that she, like other teachers, will soon be
allowed to cover fewer topics, but in greater depth.

The teacher’s one complaint: There just aren’t enough
classrooms. And because she has to travel between two
schools—often carrying materials for experiments with
her—the pupils, she said, don’t spend enough time on
science.

Here in Murray County, Ga., roughly 20 miles from the Tennessee
line, reactions to Ms. Cox’s handling of the curriculum-revision
process are much the same. Controversies that not long ago were making
headlines have faded away. They’ve been replaced with questions
about how teachers will be trained to cover the new material and when
students will be tested on it. ("Ga. Chief Backs Down on
'Evolution' Stance," Feb. 11, 2004.)

At other stops on this leg of Ms. Cox’s "border tour,"
teachers and principals are just eager to show the woman whom one boy
calls "the boss of schools" their most outstanding work.

At Chatsworth Elementary, Superintendent Cox is escorted by Cathy
Brooks, a 1st grade teacher whose son is stationed in Iraq, down a
hallway lined with students’ patriotic artwork and tributes to
members of the military.

Later, at Gladden Middle School— also part of the
8,000-student Murray County district—the Republican state chief
is greeted by a steel-drum band.

Perhaps this community’s ability to move easily beyond the
debate over evolution and other curricular decisions has been due to
how quickly Ms. Cox admitted she had made a mistake. In the case of
evolution, for example, she recommended that Georgia’s
performance standards, which the state board of education is expected
to vote on in July, exclude the often-inflammatory term and instead
refer to "biological changes over time."

"It’s one time where I focused maybe too much on the classroom
teacher and maybe missed the bigger picture," she said during an
earlier interview in her office in Atlanta. "I should have gotten other
people’s input."

In other areas, though, it is Ms. Cox’s teaching experience
that is viewed as her greatest strength.

"She has been very conscientious about the needs of teachers, the
needs of principals," said Allene Magill, the executive director of the
Professional Association of Georgia Educators, or PAGE, a nonunion
organization for teachers.

Leap From the Classroom

Many education observers here in Georgia also give the first-term
superintendent credit for rebuilding what had been called a
dysfunctional state education department into a more service-oriented
agency, led by well-respected educators. And, they say, she’s
done that in spite of her lack of conventional leadership
credentials.

"She went from the classroom to a $6 billion organization," said
Stephen D. Dolinger, the president of the Georgia Partnership for
Excellence in Education, a business- led group.

Before Ms. Cox’s election in 2002, the department was headed
by another Republican, Linda C. Schrenko, a maverick whose two terms
were marked by power struggles with governors and state board members
and poor relationships with education associations.

Many district officials— particularly those in the smaller
systems that depend the most on the state department of
education—complained they couldn’t get answers to their
questions when they called the agency.

Ms. Cox "inherited a DOE with a lot of gaps, a lot of disconnect,"
said Ms. Magill, a former district superintendent.

She also inherited problems with the state’s testing program,
including scoring mistakes and results that were delivered too late for
schools to make timely decisions about student performance. But her
staff has already been meeting with the testing company Riverside to
develop the new assessments and to make sure the contracts are
clear.

In the 1½ years she’s been in office, the schools chief
has also partially succeeded at restoring functions that were removed
during the administration of former Gov. Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat.
Projects such as a new student-information system are once again
responsibilities of the education department.

What Ms. Cox wanted to bring back the most, however, was the agency
in charge of school accountability—now called the Office of
Student Achievement. The Democratic- controlled House rejected that
move for what Ms. Cox calls "partisan reasons."

Regardless of the formal separation, Martha R. Reichrath, the
executive director of the student-achievement office, is a member of
Ms. Cox’s Cabinet, and their agencies hold joint planning
meetings.

Ms. Cox has also showed creativity by establishing a position at the
department to work specifically on raising SAT scores in the
state—which ranks last in national comparisons on the
test—and increasing the availability of Advanced Placement
courses.

For the first time in almost a decade, Georgia also has a governor
and a state superintendent of the same political party—a
situation that many observers find refreshing. While Ms. Cox says she
and Gov. Sonny Perdue, who also was elected in 2002, tend to agree on
education goals, her perspective as a teacher and his as a businessman
sometimes clash.

Still, Benjamin Scafidi, the governor’s education policy
adviser, says the two offices communicate on a daily basis. "Who
advises [Gov. Perdue] on education?" he said. "She is right at the top
of his list."

But Merchuria Chase Williams, the president of the Georgia
Association of Educators, a National Education Association affiliate,
worries that Ms. Cox might not be as quick to speak up about ways to
improve schools in order to maintain her collegial relationship with
the governor.

Ms. Williams said she realizes that with a tight budget, it’s
difficult for Ms. Cox to push for greater funding.

"But she can still be a voice," Ms. Williams added. "She can say,
‘Look, Governor, some things just have to happen to raise student
achievement.’"

‘Like Night and Day’

Others who have worked with Ms. Cox so far say the superintendent of
schools has shown her willingness to learn by welcoming an audit of the
proposed curriculum while the finishing touches are still being
added.

It was a similar audit in 2002 that sparked an initial revision of
the state’s Quality Core Curriculum under Ms. Schrenko.

Conducted by the Curriculum Management Center in Johnston, Iowa, an
affiliate of Phi Delta Kappa International, a professional association
for educators, the critique called the state’s curriculum "bulky
and awkward," said it lacked rigor, and was not well-aligned with
national standards. Interviews conducted state wide also revealed that
few teachers even used the document.

Ms. Schrenko, however, viewed the audit as a politically motivated
move made by the state school board and wouldn’t agree to an
interview during the process.

Working on the new audit has been like "night and day," said Bill
Poston, the executive vice president of the audit center, who also
conducted the original study. Ms. Cox is a "breath of fresh air," he
said. "She’s without an ax to grind."

Still, for a while this winter and spring, it looked as though she
might be headed for some of the same troubles that afflicted her
predecessor.

First, she shocked educators and parents alike with her
recommendation to keep the word "evolution" out of the new curriculum.
Then an uproar occurred over plans to move much of the study of the
Civil War from the high school level to the elementary and middle
grades—a shift that some teachers said would not treat a pivotal
period in the state’s history with enough depth. Finally, the
state board scrapped the proposed language arts standards for K-3 after
the Washington-based National Center on Education and the Economy
refused to allow the state to alter any of its standards.

But because of her willingness not to draw a line in the sand, Ms.
Cox has moved beyond those issues—what Mr. Poston calls "bumps in
the road"—to face the real challenge: implementation of the
proposed curriculum.

Implementation Anxiety

Already, some educators have expressed anxiety over delays in the
development of the K-3 language arts standards.

Mary Lou Jordan, a curriculum director for the 2,200-student Jasper
County district in central Georgia, said she’s worried
she’ll have to be training teachers on the new curriculum at the
very time the district is getting ready to open school this coming
fall.

"I don’t think she’s really thought it through," said
Ms. Jordan, who also serves as the president of the Georgia Association
of Educational Leaders, an umbrella organization for five education
groups in the state. "She was a teacher, and she should know how it
feels to have things dumped on you."

Otherwise, Ms. Jordan said, she supports the new performance
standards and believes the new curriculum will finally show teachers
how to help their students meet expectations for their respective
grades.

In spite of years of talk about standards-based instruction, many
teachers outside the Atlanta area "do not know how to do that," and
still rely on textbooks, Ms. Jordan said.

That is why, Ms. Magill of PAGE said, the state needs to offer
professional development in more than just an online format.

"If you roll out a curriculum without professional development, it
just lands on your desk like a new phone book," added Tim Callahan,
PAGE’s director of member services and publications.

Ms. Cox is hoping to better explain her implementation
timeline—which is expected to last six years—this week at a
state board meeting. For example, because the state’s weakest
area is middle school math, the 6th grade math curriculum is among the
topics teachers will be trained on this year. Training will begin in
September, the state chief said, after the first hectic days of
school.

One political challenge Ms. Cox will continue to face is pressure
from policymakers who want to see results much faster, said Mr.
Dolinger of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education.

"There are some people saying, ‘We’ve got to fix
Georgia,’" he said, "and we can’t wait six years for a
rollout."

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